1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an integral-type reaction cartridge and, more particularly, to an integral-type reaction cartridge for separating a target substance.
2. Description of Related Art
Nowadays, it is a trend to use magnetic separation in the purification and isolation of biomolecules. Based on the attractability of magnetic particles to magnetic fields, the magnetic separation technique can be used to separate a target substance bound to magnetic particles from a complex and highly viscous mixture and is applicable to bio-affinity adsorption, protein or nucleic acid isolation, cell marking and classification, immunochemistry, and so on. The most significant advantage of magnetic separation is the efficiency with which a target substance can be extracted at high purity. More specifically, the target substance can be eluted from the purification device as soon as the magnetic field is removed. In contrast to the conventional separation techniques such as centrifugation, filtering, and chromatography which are more complicated and typically require multiple uses of chemicals, magnetic separation shows a lower risk of damaging the target substance during purification and therefore is more capable of preserving the activity of the target substance.
Take a genetic analysis of a target substance for example. The target substance, a solution, and magnetic particles are placed in a reaction container of a reaction cartridge for reaction such that the target substance is bound to the magnetic particles. Afterward, the mixture is transferred to a separation container of the reaction cartridge by a drawing mechanism. When a magnetic field is subsequently applied to the separation container from the outside, the target substance and the magnetic particles are attracted to the wall of the separation container in a concentrated manner. Then, a drawing mechanism is placed in the separation container to draw out the non-target substance, which is not bound to the magnetic particles, and the magnetic field is removed. Thus, only the target substance-bound magnetic particles are left in the separation container. However, if the drawing mechanism is improperly positioned in the separation container during the drawing process, the target substance and the magnetic particles are likely to be drawn out, too, thereby reducing the accuracy of the test result. While the drawing mechanism can be improved upon to solve the foregoing problem, the improvement process is complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, it is an important issue in the related industry to find an alternative way to increase the accuracy of test results while lowering the costs of tests.